Although I like Metacity, it is not as low-weight as others, like
xfwm4. I'd like to change the default window manager for GNOME in FC3,
but whenever I do gconf --> desktop --> gnome --> applications -->
window_manager --> default and change there /usr/bin/xfwm4, upon session
restart metacity kicks in and I can't stop it from running, cause it
immediately loads up again! How can I change this behavior? Is it even
remotely possible to do this, or FC3's GNOME WM is hardcoded into some
GNOME parts?

Hi all... Maybe I'm being too paranoid, but I just wanted to know
what may be going on if I have a lot of messages in /var/log/messages
about root sessions being opened and closed very quickly, for instance:
Mar 23 16:55:01 Blackhawk crond(pam_unix)[6028]: session opened for user
root by (uid=0)
Mar 23 16:55:01 Blackhawk crond(pam_unix)[6028]: session closed for user
root
As you can see the session lasts less than a second. What does this
mean? Are these processes that require root access that open the session
and as soon as these services are done, close it??
Thanks!
PS: I know this may not be the best place to post this, if so, what
would be the best place to post this?

Hello.
I'd like to give my point of view of the current state of Bluecurve and
desktop integration in Fedora, focusing on the artwork.
-- The icon set --
The BC icon set is of course comprehensive and generally of very high
quality, but there are areas where it is lacking: very small icons,
16x16 or 20x20, are often badly hinted. It looks like the 48x48 version
has been scaled down, and a very sharp black edge has been added along
the perimeter. Sometimes hinting is missing entirely, leaving a very
blurry icon. Also, too much detail is crammed into the small icons.
Compare these two screenshots of the Gnome file selector:
http://petrix.se/fedora/fileselector_bluecurve.pnghttp://petrix.se/fedora/fileselector_gnome.png
The Gnome icons on the left are not only scaled-down versions of the
larger ones, but completely redesigned. The Bluecurve Home and Desktop
icons are good examples of down-scaled, black-outlined icons with too
much detail, and the filesystem icons are missing hinting.
I think focus should shift from providing half-done icons for every
single menu entry (Sound Juicer, XChat, etc) to improving the icons that
make sense for cross-DE (desktop environment) integration, such as basic
operations (open, close, home), navigation, RH/Fedora specific
applications (system-config-*) and maybe a few main applications (web
browser, email program). Build on top of the existing Gnome and
KDE/Crystal icon sets, adding a unique "feel", instead of replacing
100%. Ximian Desktop only changed the folder icons and a handful of
others, but along with the Gtk theme it made a huge difference. The KDE
Crystal icons go very well with the BC icons, and KDE would benefit
enormously from better 16x16 icons.
-- KDE/Qt --
KDE and Qt are obviously not the main focus of the Fedora desktop team,
but the Bluecurve Qt theme was a pioneering effort. However, the version
shipped with FC3 has a long list of rendering differences from the Gtk
theme. I have personally done some hacking on the Qt theme, trying to
bring it closer to the Gtk one:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=141125
None of it has yet shown up in Rawhide, despite being well received. A
lot of 3:rd party commercial/scientific applications are written in Qt,
and having a near-perfect Qt theme will add to the professional feel of
a Red Hat/Fedora desktop.
Maybe Qt could be modified to use the Gtk file selector, when an
environment variable is set?
-- OpenOffice.org/NWF --
The state of of NWF in OOo in 1.1.x, and also in 2.0, is promising at
best. If it were up to me, I wouldn't ship it for a few more months. The
widget coverage has increased in 2.0, but the quality of individual
widgets is still very low.
http://petrix.se/fedora/OOo.png
Sizes, alignment, shapes, highlighting etc etc. Since the Open Office
suite is such a prominent application, I believe more manpower should be
thrown at the problem. I know this comes off very negative, and I do not
mean to diminish the efforts of the NWF hackers (Dan W for example). It
will look tremendous once it's done. It's just that 100% of the widgets
are 50% finished, and it would look a lot better if 50% of the widgets
were 100% done, and the rest were #ifdef-ed out until they are done.
A guide to hacking NWF would be great to attract outsiders, and a list
of tricks to build the beast for limited (NWF-only) testing. Stuff that
can be ./configure-ed out, ccache etc.
-- Firefox/Thunderbird (XUL) --
FF/TB look fairly good already, but have a number of annoying rendering
bugs. Submenu arrows, icons alignment on buttons and so on. Better icon
coverage in the menus would also be nice -look at the Industrial theme,
it has icons for nearly every menu entry:
http://linuxart.com/log/archives/2004/09/20/industrial-for-firefox/
-- Conclusion --
So let me sum up:
* Fewer, but better Bluecurve icons. Focus on the small ones.
* Fix the Qt theme. Patch and bug list in Bugzilla. Not complete, but a
good start.
* More manpower to OOo/NWF, it's farther behind but very important.
* Better icon coverage in menus/preference dialog in FF/TB.
/Peter Backlund

Hello all,
I have unsucessfully been attempting to find out through both
documentation, testing, and internet sources if I can get consolehelper
to act more like sudo rather than su. Right now my problem is that
there is NO WAY to roll this out to more users as a desktop alternative
without giving them some power user ability ( printers, date and time,
removable storage managment, ... ). Right now in order to give them
access to these applications AFAICT I must either give the users the
root password ( not gonna happen ) or create a pam.d file so that there
is no password prompt ( pam_wheel with trust option ). Neither of these
is a truly acceptable option at this point.
Any change should try to keep the system as close to baseline as
possible, I would prefer not to rip out the consolehelper system, but I
will if I have to. The featureset I want is identical to sudo, but I
will make accomidations as long as I can allow users to run a specific
command after prompting for the users password.
If anyone can point me in the right direction or just tell me that it's
impossible with the current system that would be a great help.
Cheers,
Eric Warnke
Systems Administer, Research ITS
SUNY at Albany

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Hi all,
Any idea on when FC4 will be available for download? The mention of
OOo 2 being provided in it (among the other additions that were related
OOo 2) make it sound great. What version of GNOME will be included.
(URL can be considered a suitable answer to these questions...) Thanks!
-David Chipman
--
David C. Chipman <dchipman(a)ican.net>

Being a belt-&-suspenders kind of guy, especially about security, I've
been running both yum nightly updates and up2date (on three FC1 PCs and an
FC2 PC). Someone recommended synaptic, and I installed that. Now when I
invoke it, it gives me an error message about duplicate packages ; and
when I look, sure enough, there are two -- with slightly different indicia.
Will keeping both really make trouble? It looks like synaptic will let me
find them and choose -- but not tell me how to choose. (My impulse would
just be to take the later a/o higher numbered.)
When I invoke synaptic, I get this :
=====
[btth@localhost btth]$ synaptic &
[1] 10128
[btth@localhost btth]$
(synaptic:10132): Gtk-CRITICAL **: file gtkwidget.c: line 2041
(gtk_widget_hide): assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed
=====
and once it opens, it shows me :
=====
There are multiple versions of "gd-devel" in your system.
This package won't be cleanly updated, unless you leave
only one version. To leave multiple versions installed,
you may remove that warning by setting the following
option in your configuration file:
RPM::Allow-Duplicated { "^gd-devel$"; };
To disable these warnings completely set:
RPM::Allow-Duplicated-Warning "false";
=====
similarly for gstreamer-plugins, gnome-session, man, libpng,
syatem-config-display, slang, GConf2-devel, libbonobo, krb5-libs,
rsync, squid, gnome-applets, rpm-build, shadow-utils, nfs-utils,
mod_ssl, libpcap, and mkisofs.
--
Beartooth Implacable, Linux Evangelist & Gadfly
neo-redneck, curmudgeonly codger with FC1&2, YDL4
Pine 4.62, Pan 0.14.2; Privoxy 3.0.1; Opera 7.54, Firefox 1.0
Bear in mind that I have little idea what I am talking about.

there was some recent talk about including additional templates in
OpenOffice.org as distributed by Fedora:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2005-March/msg00478.html
the discuss was expanded later to other extras, like clipart.
it appears other distributors are doing exactly this: add a lot of
extras to their version of OOo, for example Novell is planning to
include images from the Open Clip Art Library:
http://lists.freedesktop.org/pipermail/clipart/2005-March/002539.html
someone has created a rpm which probably will go in Fedora Extras
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2005-March/msg00566.html
but IMO, something better is needed: integration - either include the
clip art images in an OOo gallery using the patch from Novell or modify
the OOo menu, adding a new item Insert->Pictures->Clipart which will
point to the location of the installed images.
also i think is worth judging the usefulness of including a *selection*
of clipart in Core (i know in FC5 will not matter much if a package is
in Core or Extras, this is about the next release, FC4).
my take is: including clipart in the default install can benefit the
overall value of the desktop, but also the size constraints should be
considered.
--
nicu